Disney’s Frozen won’t be released theatrically for another month-and-half, but it’s already melting into one giant slushee of controversy. Some people have chosen to boycott the film because of the chauvinist revisions to its storyline. But the real shitsnowstorm of controversy started from within the studio after Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation on Frozen, claimed that it was “really, really difficult” to animate women because they have to be kept pretty while expressing emotions:

“Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry.”

In fairness to DiSalvo, I get what he’s saying as an animator. Female characters in animation typically have a more limited range of facial expressions than their male counterparts, and they are caricatured only in villainous (think Cruella de Vil or Medusa in The Rescuers) or comedic contexts. Even Golden Age Disney animators complained about being assigned princesses and other female leads because they were expected to keep these characters within a predictable range of acting. Put two on the screen at the same time, and it becomes an instant challenge.

But DiSalvo’s comments about women having to look pretty and having a limited range of expression are not inherent rules within animation; they are arbitrary aesthetic choices that have been handed down from one generation of Disney animators to the next. Feature film animators choose to use a recycled palette of expressions and they choose to portray woman as cardboard cutouts because directors choose to make these type of films—and entertainment companies profit handsomely when they do.

The Disney Company grosses billions of dollars every year from its Disney Princess franchise. If a company can earn money simply by reducing half of the world’s population into a generic and falsified ideal of beauty, more power to them.

Enlightened animation fans, however, have begun to reject this male-dominated view of animated women, and they have been using every slight opportunity to express their discontent. Someday, an animation company will heed the call and create films with believable women characters that represent the full emotional, mental and physical spectrum of women. Until then, we’ll have to settle for Tangled, Brave and Frozen.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s Disney’s movie, not ours. If they want their characters to look pretty, then more power to them! While I do think it shouldn’t be a big deal, I don’t thing people should get all prissy over it either. Like I said, it’s Disney’s movie, so let them make it in their style! …I’m going to get a lot of hate for this, huh?

Remarkable Kanoodle

Funny, I was just thinking how nice the Disney female protagonist head design was (Tangled, Frozen) in terms of being very appealing as against say Pixar or almost anyone else. But if that violates a cultural taboo they should feel free to make them as cartoon generic and common as the male head designs.

optimist

There’s a lot of willful parsing and misunderstanding going on here with some people online.
The animator is talking about a technical challenge, as “in fairness”, Amid points out. He’s talking about keeping a character with, yes, a “pretty” face from going so off model that it looks grotesque or ‘wrong”, NOT that women characters should always look pretty or not express extreme emotions. Sure, there’s an aesthetic choice-and then there’s a technical choice/challenge. THAT is what he’s discussing and trying to describe.
Secondly, I’m not a CG animator, but it seems to me that working with a hard-modeled, “three dimensional” puppet rig requires a simpler sort of base when one is translating 2D designs, or (yes, again) attractive SISTERS, who, horror of horrors, are supposed to read as related girls of a similar age, and then taking those 3D versions and having them look “the same but different” in, say, a screaming argument. it’s much easier to get that across in 2D, imho. But that isn’t the type of animation being discussed.
Lastly, I haven’t seen Frozen yet. I don’t believe anyone in the public sphere has. I’ll reserve my review of the characters’ success as “believable” personalities until I actually sit and see all the animation unfold in front of me. That seems only fair, don’t you think?

Social context

Think of it this way, news items like this act more like a reminder that Disney has always had and is continuing to maintain a very narrow definition of ‘appeal’ for it’s women characters. Many of us are and have been fighting against this sort of thing for a long time, we’re still annoyed Anna looks like Rapunzel and when this tweet came around, it just sounded like whining. Maybe if the designs were more unique, it would be less noticeable when they go off model? They made 3 girls (including Rapunzel) who have the exact same face, and then had the audacity to complain that they can’t differentiate them from each other. Yet no one can figure out why we’re bashing our heads against the wall.
They’re basically telling us that it’s MORE effort to make pretty, appealing women characters and keep them expressive than it is for whatever miraculous system makes the male characters less of a challenge. It isn’t even done out of laziness, it’s actually more difficult and more time consuming. And to women who grew up with this and are sick of it already, that’s just a slap in the face.

Toads

As a 3D animator and modeler, I assure you it’s possible to make a variety of female characters in 3D. Plus, a female rig is no more limited than a male rig. The problem here is males thinking that attractive women must be attractive all time time. FALSE. Even “attractive females” can make funny or even ugly faces sometimes. This is realistic to human beings. They’re limiting their animation due to limited thinking over what a woman can be and must be to be a “attractive female.” It’s not due to any real technical issue in animation.

Elf

Most interesting animated female character I have seen recently is probably Lucy from Despicable Me 2. Disney, ironically the pioneer of this animation industry, could probably learn a thing or 2 from the creators of Despicable Me. Such shame.

Shazbot

Yeah – too bad, though, that Lucy was so annoying and unfunny.

Rayya Brown-Wright

It’s sad to see that animation is as limited as real life when it comes to its interpretation of women. For all of the technology that we throw into these 3D animated features,we still can’t get past these One dimensional interpretations??

slowtiger

So right! The problem is not the animation, it’s the choice of stories and characters. I’d go so far and say it’s a problem of US vs. european film industry. Hollywood feeds cookie-cutter female characters to the audience, and in animation this only is worse.

Dusty Ayres

Have a problem with reading comprehension, don’t you? The man quoted never said anything as insulting as you’ve made it out to be.

Scott Benson

I wonder what other swaths of the population are difficult to animate individualistically based on their company-mandated essential characteristics?

Guest

This is such a pile of shit. First of all…. Lino is not the director, he’s the head of animation on Frozen. Second,
all you haters are never going to be happy, because if the expressions
were pushed any further on many of those mouth and eye shapes, the
characters would go off model, and they would look ugly and you’d all
complain that Disney was making ugly films. To completely discredit Tangled is just completely unwarranted… because the truth is that most people
love it. I wish people would stop complaining so much about what other
people aren’t “doing well”, and just fucking step up to the plate and
put in the work yourself to fix it, rather than crying about a misquoted
piece of information that one of the most talented guys in animation
said in a side-interview. How old are all of you? It’s unbelievable.

Barrett

Wow, hostile much?

Look, I have nothing against Tangled, it was a beautifully-animated film with a decent-if-derivative story. I admire the technical achivement of making 3D act reasonably like high-end 2D. Glen Keane’s influence obviously helped proper Disney 3D out of the level they were in with things like Bolt and Meet The Robinsons.

All the same, the characters practically look like “re-skinned” versions of Rapunzel. I’m sure there have been some advancements as to the underlying software, but stylistically, it’s kinda stale. It’s not like Disney hasn’t been guilty of this before in 2D, but after Wreck-It Ralph, I think expectations were a bit higher for Disney to have a wider range of character construction and face shapes. I think the videogame setting forced the decisionmakers to push things into more distinctive directions because the characters from Sugar Rush had to look like they came from another “universe” than the ones in “Fix It Felix.” With the return to classic storybookland, the old tried-and-true look for the heroine has returned as well.

I know from all the concept are I see that Disney’s artists are capable of all kinds of boundry-pushing character design, and not just freakish “look at this weird thing” edginess, but stuff with real mainstream appeal that also looks fresh. Laika has managed to actually make features that have that kind of “odd but appealing” innovation, and I think a lot of people would like to see Disney do the same and not waste the talent they have in their team. The final look of the humans in Frozen feel very “by committee” or “studio-head-approved.”

Faith Erin Hicks draws flat characters, and doesn’t have to worry about movement. I’m not knocking her style, but she’s in a completely different universe and has no right to comment until she’s tried to break the animated female mold on the same terms Disney set up for their animators.

I won’t even comment on constructed drawings, since this is a CG film, and I don’t want to defend disney’s choice, but I will say I’d love to see her try to work with princess characters. It isn’t easy animating feminine, and there’s only a handful of people in the last century that have been able to do it convincingly.

timlai

I see your point but Faith Erin Hicks graduated from Sheridan’s animation program and worked in the animation industry for several years. I’m pretty sure she knows what she’s talking about.

Alex Printz

Then as an animator she should know all the more how difficult that disney-esque type princess animating is. Her remarks seem even less comprehensive now.

timlai

But the point that she’s making isn’t that drawing princesses that meet the same standards for beauty and keeping them distinct isn’t hard. The point is that Disney’s mentality that all female characters must be “pretty” and that they all must meet the same exact standards for beauty represents everything that’s wrong with Disney. And would anyone ever say that it’s difficult to have a movie where there are two male protagonists? God forbid, what would Disney do if they ever wanted to have a movie with THREE female main characters?

Geez

I’m sorry, but when has it been a problem with female leads being pretty? Aren’t you being hypocritical? Name one animated film you enjoyed where the lead heroine was “ugly”. There are simply different standards for

The truth is that Disney is a company created by white people and their style is therefore white-dominated, using the same large-eyed, button-nose template that made Ariel and Rapunzel so popular. That’s my main riff – there’s no range in feature placement, but hey – that’s they’re style for the white female heroine. The point is not “female characters shouldn’t be pretty” (wtf?)

Funkybat

Esmerelda in “Hunchback” was definitely not the “typical Disney pretty girl” though she was by most accounts attractive. Pocahontas’ design was pretty groundbreaking as far as Disney “princesses” goes, very lanky build and a lot of flat plane shapes instead of lots of circles. Most of the characters in “Atlantis” looked more “street art” inspired than they did like Snow White or Cinderella. Lilo & Sitich was very distinctive, I love that they basically let Chris Sanders do his thing in regards to character design instead of forcing him to “fit the mold.”

Disney has a small range of “typical” styles for male and female characters, but they have pushed beyond that in the past. “Wreck-It Ralph” is the most recent example, and I think some people were hoping it was a sign of the new blood at Disney setting a whole new course for design and writing for features. I have no info beyond the bare outline on the story of “Frozen” and will withhold my judgment until I see the film, but as far as character designs go, they do look more reminiscent of “Tangled” than i was expecting.

Power_Animator

Wrek-it-Ralp was an accumulation of different game characters of course it would be different. A hodge podge of characters..the movie would have never worked if all the characters looked relatively the same.

Alex Printz

Then she should be attacking Disney corporation for their disney ideals instead of the artists and directors admitting how hard it is to meet that expectation. She doesn’t understand how short of a leash they’re on right now over there.

Jones

Animation is not about “the full emotional, mental and physical spectrum”, at least imho. (To a lesser extent, that goes for the medium – film – as a whole). Movies like Avatar or Iron Man 3 earn billions – and we criticize an animated cartoon (which nobody has seen yet, I might add) for doing what animation is supposed to do? Princess and the Frog was racist, because it had a black heroine, now Frozen is chauvinistic, because it has not one, but two female leads – what´s next? Accusing Schindler´s list of anti-semitism?

http://the-animatorium.blogspot.com/ Natalie Belton

Uh oh, it’s one of these articles again. Let the angry comments commence!

Brill 93

Its like Disney can’t do anything anymore without these social justice idiots making it seem Disney is some sort of racist, sexist company. Everybody is so full of holding a grudge on old Disney that they forget modern Disney is different. If you don’t like Disney don’t watch any of their stuff. No on is forcing you.

Harry Bastard

A grudge? A grudge. The characters LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. They’re templated, they have no visual character of their own, they’re like vat-grown Monsanto clones. They’re not women, they’re DISNEY PRINCESSES, a marketer’s idealized version of what a heroine SHOULD look and act like. If yer into that, fine. But don’t go on about holding grudges to women who don’t fit the Disney mold and find it more than a lil’ demeaning.

Brill, man, I wasn’t tryin’ to piss you off, I was just tryin’ to make a strong point. The idea is to compose yerself and make a strong point back. Sorry if I made you feel the need to slag me.

IJK

Studio Ghibli’s protagonists are all templated. Most of the Looney Tunes characters are pretty interchangeable. Pluck off Bugs’ ears , give him a bill and paint him black, he’s Daffy. Hell, wasn’t Elmer based on Porky’s design? Or vice versa?

Change Aladdin’s hairstyle and he can be a pretty princess himself.

This isn’t restricted to Disney princesses, this is just for art in general. When you have a style, you repeat it. When Bruce Timm directs a superhero tv show, you can expect Superman to look just like Batman. All of Hannah Barbara’s characters are templated as well.

That’s why it’s upsetting that people get up in arms when Disney does this just become they’re grasping at straws at reasons to be mad at them. Early on, Disney’s princes pretty much all looked like the ones in Cinderella. All of their horses were the same. They re-used damn designs from Robin Hood to Jungle Book. If you’re looking for misogynist, racist, sexist, whatever reasons that Disney is doing this, save your breath. They do it for animation purposes, not because they hate women,

Harry Bastard

Hmm…You do make a point about style, but compare character! Princess Mononoke or the lead from Howl’s Moving Castle (which was about as fairytale romantic as you can get) vs. any of the Disney Princesses. And the villains of Myazaki’s tales…the lady general from Nausicaa, or the leader of Iron Town. Myazaki’s movies feature strong, believable female leads throughout. And yes, he does have a consistent look to them, but ‘bombshells’ they ain’t. Ironic that his films are published in North America BY Disney. (Yeesh, now I sound like Myazaki’s press agent.)

By the way, ‘member that ep of Batman when Harley, Poison Ivy and Catwoman teamed up? No wimpy womens there. All beauty ideals in design, but destinct and strong in character. That’s me beef. Right, enough geekery. Thanks for the well thought out reply, by the way!

Rachel

Studio Ghibli protagonists templated? Kiki has insecurities, San hates humans, Eboshi hired female prostitutes, Mei is lovable and stubborn, Fio is a aircraft developer, Gina owns a hotel, Shizuku loves antiques and writing, and Taeko is a normal twenty-something year old who can’t let go the inner 6th grader. Please educate yourself before you speak.

IJK

Please understand the topic being discussed before chiming in overly defensive.

Everyone here is talking about design, not personality.

Toads

Actually with 3D animation there is absolutely no benefit to having the characters look similar. You don’t have to worry about drawing the character the same way over and over again. It’s a 3D model that you’re moving like a puppet. It’s more similar to stopmotion than 3D in a lot of ways.

Personally I think Disney needs to try to do something fresh and genuine instead of trying to mimic the past.

Rias

I know… it’s a month old, but… the fact that other studios do it doesn’t make it ok. I’m sure if you took the time to look, you would find people complaining about Ghibli, too (Though, the fact that none of his women look like ideal beauties makes people more at ease. Also, Kiki’s delivery service, you have women of different body types like the pregnant woman who looks naturally portly and the woman in the woods with the wicked strong jaw. Actually… yeah, no. Ghibli can be pretty good about making somewhat different faces within the limits of his style. Main characters, too. Chihiro’s face in spirited away, her nose was flatter, her cheeks were fatter. It was charming. He tried, but I digress…). And the daffy and bugs thing bothers me. Take a bald characters face, and change the nose and take away the ears and yes…. you would have a distinct character :u. So no. I daresay, they aren’t very interchangeable, in so far as they changed their silhouette.
…And Aladdin has a pretty distinct nose (bigger) and a long face. Make him a princess and he would be head and shoulders above the rest in terms of he looks different, which would be fantastic.

But yeah, everyone else does it too isn’t a good excuse. It’s really not. And the subject is not ‘everyone else’ it’s Disney right now and it is a problem. And the fact that the only not ‘pretty’ females in disney land I can think of are dotty old women, or villains is super sad. So, I think this is just adding straw to the old camels back.

Also, unrelated to your post, sometimes same sex siblings don’t look so similar. Cause they have two parents to get genes from (I look more like my dad and my sister looks like my mom). I’m just saying…

darciam

They don’t look exactly the same – I’m kinda offended by people saying they look exactly the same since it seems to imply that everyone who is “attractive” and white must look identical. They have a lot of distinct differences, and while it’s easy to overlay cherry-picked still shots and go “LOOK THEY’RE IDENTICAL” when you see them in motion or swap around the hair, you see how different they are. They really don’t look any more similar than Flynn and Hans or Kristoff.

Guest

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As a woman who worked on this film and knows it inside and out, I would suggest that people actually go see it before making false assumptions about supposed “chauvinist” storylines and complain about lack of dimension in the female characters. It is a fantastic film with a strong, appealing heroine, so please hold your judgement and hissy fits until you actually know what you are complaining about.

Toads

As a woman. Oooooo.

“I’m a woman and I support this, so it can’t possibly be sexist. Women never support, create, or do anything that’s sexist or chauvinistic.”
Hahah!

SarahJesness

I’m not against wanting female characters to look pretty. Animation is a visual medium, after all, and a lot of people want to see pretty films. (this especially applies when you’re doing “princessy” stuff and the characters are supposed to be pretty) But come on, this is Disney! Kings of animation! They should be able to make more than one 3D face design for lady characters!

Power_Animator

I agree with you, lets just say that people only see his statement they way they’d like it.

http://www.thecaterjillar.com/ Jillers

Annnnd the amount of people missing the point in the comments piles up and up and up…

MOXCRunner1

Yep. A bit late in the comments, I know, but I always got the sense that when he said “pretty,” it had nothing to do with physical attractiveness, and everything to do with keeping the characters looking human. But it’s of course possible that you totally disagree with me, in which case I’ll look rather foolish:P

farleftside

Need I remind everyone of Helen and Violet Parr in the Incredibles, both of whom showed a wide range of non-pretty emotion.

IJK

How are you looking at “non-pretty”?

As in, they were “drawn” ugly or anger is an ugly emotion? Because they both practically looked like sex symbols to me.

AmidAmidi

The sentence I wrote means the following: He is saying something as an animator, and I get it. Had I written “As an animator, I get what he’s saying,” then that would have been an incorrect sentence since I’m not an animator. Sorry for the confusion.

slowtiger

I always found Miyazaki’s range of style neither special nor really large, but even with a style comfortably nested in the center of Anime he is able to tell stories which are just original enough to stand out.

Toads

He allows his female characters to make ugly and ridiculous faces.

slowtiger

I think the problem with female characters in Hollywood feature animation (and to a large extent in live action as well) lies in the stories, which at their core are still victorian. As Arno Schmidt put it, “In the victorian novel the main characters are the least interesting characters.” All thoses princes and princesses and wannabe-nobles are completely uninteresting for a contemporary audience, but they serve well as projection objects for anybody’s wishes, desires, and fears. They serve so well because they are essentially blank, with no real problems and even less traits of personality. “Being pretty” is not how I’d like to describe any of my real-life friends, it’s more of an insult than anything. “Being a princess” (or “being the Chosen One”) is not a profession, nothing one has to study and struggle for.

Additionally Hollywood-pretty is a very small portion of what people in real life find attractive. So no wonder animators find it difficult to work convincingly within these double restrictions: it’s really hard to maintain a certain state of blandness all the time. How would one ever apply Howard Hawks to a Disney Movie – “Show people at work, and you get an interesting movie”?

Lumiere

I agree, especially with “Show people at work and you get an interesting movie.” Book too! ANIMATED by N. Lumiere shows animators at work and play.

Funkybat

That’s one reason I loved “Wreck-It Ralph” so much. Instead of being based off of a Victorian romance/adventure template, it felt like it was more akin to a modern “outcast/geek” story such as Scott Pilgrim or The Venture Bros. I was not surprised when I learned the director was a veteran of The Simpsons and Futurama. My generation relates to that sensibility a lot more than the “romance & rescue fantasy” that worked so well for many earlier animated films. I’m glad to see movies like “Ralph”, “Paranorman” and “Coraline” succeed, it’s certainly better than what most non-Disney studios were doing to compete with Disney in the 90s.

Shazbot

I have absolutely NO interest in this “Frozen” abomination. The original Hans Christian Andersen story featured a plucky little girl who endures hardships and dangers to rescue her MALE friend – a neat twist on the “damsel-in-distress” trope. But Disney has completely gutted the story, dumped Kay and Gerda, so that its version can feature not ONE, but TWO princesses! Two princesses, twice the merchandising sales! Win-win! It’s such an obvious, mercenary and crass ploy that not even the new Mickey Mouse short in front of it will make me lay down my 9 bucks. I refuse to see this, on principle. Plus the trailer looks like a Barbie Winter Wonderland. :P

DarylT

The original Snow Queen story is awful though.

Pedro Nakama

Looks like they’ve mastered the DreamWorks smirk.

Ant G

As you said, “master” animators. 2D animators in general struggled as well to make pretty princesses and handsome princes, they depended heavily on reference and rotoscoping. Snow white being a huge example of this.

N. Lumiere

It’s a fact that Disney has a franchise of bland pretty princesses that must be followed, technical difficulties and all, to get a paycheck.
But wouldn’t it be lovely if they used some of the shiploads of money they make from the franchise to make bolder, more adventurous films? Films for adults even. Where female (and male) characters could have a broader spectrum of behaviors.
I think we’re all disappointed that so much animation talent should have such a limited scope of story lines and characters. We’d like to see Disney come out from behind the franchise template and value its world-class art more than profits.
We’ve seen some interesting new techniques in PAPERMAN and GET A HORSE so why not take a chance a do a non-franchise feature? The studio won’t go broke and audiences might actually like something new and different.

DarylT

The whole point of a Disney film is thats its for everyone.

TheGreatWormSpirit

But people do criticize Miyazaki’s stale art style though. I don’t see what he has to do with Frozen.

Mammo

Man, reading those comments in the link. And here I thought the things I’d heard about tumblr were exagerations…

TheDisbeliever

“…this guy is saying women are not allowed to express a wide variety of emotions in animation…”

No. He never said that. Please stop twisting what he said to justify your indignation.

Toads

Actually he literally did say that you have to keep them looking pretty. “they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty ” You can’t show the whole range of human emotions and faces while looking pretty. That’s very limiting.

Oh yeah I forgot how Disney encouraged you to go off-model when animating one of their 2D films HEY WAIT A MINUTE….

Sandy Blinks

There were plenty of better studios who did, though.

IJK

There are also plenty of studios who don’t care about making sure their women, or ANY characters, looking appeal at every angle and with every emotion, but we’re talking about Disney in this discussion. CGI or not, Disney would be following the same rules and principles they’ve set up for their studio.

optimist

They are still not as “flexible” as a 2D line drawing; they are different. It’s true, there are rigs that are tremendously plasticine(Disney’s in particular animate beautifully-thanks to the animators)-but that still doesn’t mean that they can’t easily go off model and look bad-especially if the head/face being animated is that of a pretty girl, one less caricatured than, say, Vanellope.

jmahon

they are. Feel free to watch Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs or Horton Hears a Who. Their rigs are so flexible often the characters are posed “to the camera”, and look more like shaded illustrations than they do 3D models and this is done on purpose. Please, stop comparing 3D to 2D by saying one is inferior to the other, this isn’t 1997.

The reason they don’t go to these extremes is because they are girls. Girls aren’t very caricatured in animated movies anymore because they (apparently) need to be doll-like at all times. Even Sam, the girl in Cloudy, was more doll-like and rigid than Flint, the guy, who was bendy and noodley and deformed at every possible opportunity. I strongly suggest you watch this movie as it’s a great example of what rigs can do if you let them.

optimist

I have seen them.
I’m going to suggest that the discussion belongs in the camp of the character designer, not the animator, if someone wants to criticize the “prettiness” factor. This all really seems to be getting far afield of what was ACTUALLY being described by LIno, though.

darciam

See, the issue with rigging is less that it isn’t capable, and more that to make a character move (lets say, a single movement) in a 2D movie requires the work of maybe two or three people. In older 2D films, it was one – one person drew the movement.

Now in CGI films, you’e looking at a lot more. Like 2D films you still have multiple people working on the animation, but now they’re all working on different segments of the same animation. The designer, the rigger, the person who assigns the movements, the person who actually does the animation – I don’t know a whole helluva lot about CGI but I do know one of the major problems IS the fact that it has a lot more people behind one scene than 2D. 2D took a lot of man power because to hand draw so many scenes requires many artists. CGI may require fewer artists in general, but a lot more per individual scenes. That’s where the real difficulty comes in. It’s more difficult when working with characters meant to be a level of realistic – still cartoons but also human and sympathetic. Vanellope was a video game character, and the more cartoonish, the more you’re going to pull off.

I don’t think going off model is as common in CGI but still totally possible, especially if the rigging is off. I was always really bothered by off-model frames in traditional animation, especially really good films. They’re only a split second normally but I would always catch them – it was always the eyes. It happened in Beauty and the Beast a couple of times and it bugged the HELL out of me because that film is absolutely beautiful which just made the very rare occasions when it happened more distracting.

http://skunkandburningtires.com/ Ju-osh

What’s funny is about this quote is, back in the days when Disney was creating their first round of classic princess flicks (Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.) it was always the PRINCES who were the bland, forgettable, pod-people that all of the animators found impossible to breathe life into. (Hell, it could even be argued that this trend lasted right up ‘til The Little Mermaid!) Now they’re claiming the reverse?!

(Quick aside: On a much more positive note, doesn’t Beauty & the Beast feature the best, most interesting, most fully realized, most emotionally nuanced Disney couple EVER? I sure think so.)

While I wouldn’t go so far as to call Disalvo’s remarks
“misogynistic” (mi·sog·y·nis·tic: Of or characterized by a hatred of
women), I would call them unfortunate. Idiotic, even. What was he aiming
for in admitting how far the studio has fallen artistically and
creatively? Underdog status? Disney is a multibillion dollar company,
fer chrissakes! Was Disalvo trying to ape Pixar’s already annoying habit
of finding some random technical innovation to hype when promoting a
new film featuring weak characters and/or story? (Realistic looking
hair! Realistic looking water! Realistic looking fabric!) Cuz honestly,
no one outside of Wired Magazine gives a fuuuh…

Maybe — more likely — it was just an awkwardly worded attempt at
patting oneself on the back for doing something that should appear par
for the course.

Which would be embarrassing.

Probably — and MUCH more likely — it was an off-the-cuff comment by a
guy who was tired and brain-dead from a months-long, around-the-world
media junket.

Which would be regrettable, yet understandable. Forgivable, even!

I’ve no doubt that Disalvo will learn from this misstep and go back
to using the carefully prepared answers vetted and edited by Disney’s
multiple legal teams and marketing departments. This will make for a
helluva lot of boring and repetitive interviews, but at least PR and the public
will be pleased.

Toads

I’d say their portrayal of both men and women have been historically sexist and limited. This just happens to be an example of sexism towards women.

Bob Robblepots

I’d say it’s sexism in general. It’s also putting men in that “emotionless meat-sack” slot.

If any you commentators knew Lino, you wouldn’t be so quick to judge him so harshly. Had you worked on this film, or any other film with difficult rigs then you would know exactly what he was talking
about, and how difficult it is to work with such complex and delicate
characters. It was easy to throw them off model. It’s that simple….he was talking in animation terms. There are plenty of reasons to dog Disney as a corporation, but this isn’t one of them.

This guy cares more about the characters in this film more than most of you will care about anything in your entire careers. He inspired and fought hard for the animators on his team and I hate to see the animation community vilify a man that hasn’t done anything but work his ass off to make something to be proud of. He just rolled off a long and exhausting production and this is a simple statement taken completely out of context…..give him a break. Go see the bloody movie and THEN form an opinion about him.

Daniel

It’s difficult because no one really knows how to draw well except for less then a handful of folks who are usually drowned out by the majority who can’t. As soon as it hits modeling, then rigging, and finally the animators who don’t draw you get the result of .. “difficult to work with such complex and delicate characters”. There is a huge majority of “artists” that don’t have the eye to make decisions on how characters should be made that make decisions; or more realistically ignore problems because they can’t tell the difference…

so what do these “artists” fall back when they do have problems? Since they can’t make improvements on a better design they saddleback on something that’s worked in the past (or more specifically an artist who did know the difference). They try to chase after what was appealing with Glen Keane’s work yet without doing the real homework that got Glen to be Glen. A lifetime of observing life, drawing, and hand-drawn animation. They superficially try to hit shapes that Glen would hit; yet don’t have the insight or knowledge behind it. That’s where you get Frozen!

I don’t want to lump Lino in that group of “artists”, but the root of the problem isn’t Lino; it’s the ego of cg animators, modelers, and riggers that drown out the artists that know what they are talking about. I’m sure there are some difficulties with throwing them off model; but that problem is compounded by the amount of uninformed decisions or indecisions that went into the models…

the problem is that the models are built by technicians not artists..

Toads

You sound like you don’t know what you’re talking about really. That’s bogus. The 3D modelers I know are amazing at drawing and even sculpting with clay. It’s amazing that in this day and age people are still fighting the 2D vs 3D battle.

daniel

.. name at least one who is at least as good as kent melton? or raffaello vercchione or Greg Dykstra? If you don’t know who these people are you don’t know what your talking about… Probably only a handful of REAL sculptors that can do their job in a professional manner but without the EGO!..

Being a modeler in my mind is on par as being a supervising hand-drawn animator.. yet that department has always run more on politics then talent..

If you can’t tell the difference between good design and bad; I guess your part of that majority that can’t draw..

egaode

Honestly most of what people are saying is NOT dissing the animator at all (even the article isn’t), but rather opening up discussion about this topic – about beauty standards and women in the industry – specifically in Disney in this case. yes, his comment is taken out of context, but you can’t much get around “Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult….” Context or not, I can’t see how an animator can percieve animating women as SO MUCH MORE DIFFICULT than animating men unless there is some underlying standard holding them back.

THAT is what most people on here are discussing. You’re creating a straw argument.

Power_Animator

NICELY SAID

DarylT

Disney already have created believable woman characters. And its certaintly not a falsefied beauty.

DarylT

Thank you. These people are being completely unreasonable.

CartoonGal

“…Someday, an animation company will heed the call and create films with believable women characters that represent the full emotional, mental and physical spectrum of women…”
Just wait for Jorge Gutierrez’s ‘Book of Life’ in the works now at ReelFX!

uland

I can’t think of a Disney movie in which ANY character isn’t really limited by type-i.e, they don’t present a “full human spectrum”.If beauty is one of the constraints- & why shouldn’t it be?- the ” full spectrum” , which includes looking unattractive – can’t be included. The male lead can’t look weak, the skinny/fat non-alpha men can’t look strong, the old woman can’t look youthful, etc.. There are super beautiful women in the world- a Cate Blanchet, for example, really couldn’t look ugly if she tried-& I don’t see why a story that includes her beauty as meaningful should be dispriveleged in favor of one that wants to “problematize” that kind of feminine beauty.
&, btw, it seems to me like 90% of feminist-ish comics use a very similar androgynous yet cute , simplified form to depict lead females (the other ten percent are anthropomorphs) .They don’t draw the zits & mustaches and cellulite -why not?
None of this means the Disney movie in question won’t be garbage or that a webcomic isn’t good.My point is that cartooning is about using types, about reducing humans to readable symbols.The idea that use of these types causes people to recognize them/enact them psychologically is confused; the causal arrow points the other way.

Bret Leback

Oh boy, another Photo-realism argument.
Without getting into the feminist-minded argument, because its lengthy and accomplishes nothing to this moment, but this article is about technical achievements and not social-engineering.
If you want to direct hate towards Disney, you should probably focus on what they did with Lohan, Cyrus, Bynes, and etc. Not some animated medium that’s arguably still in its infancy. We’re dealing with an animated visual medium, not PR.
*Personal note* I could care less about story changes. This happens to everything, all the time. Final product is never, ever, like the starting issue. However, the fact that the models of the girls are so closely related is a bit disappointing. I get that they are sisters, but did they really need to be spinning images of Rapunzel?

Giovanni Jones

Hey, don’t be laying how Cyrus is skanking for dollars or how Lohan is a train wreck at Disney. Plenty of their stars have done just fine without twerking and quirking, including Selena Gomez, Ashley Tisdale, Aly & AJ, and many others that don’t get the press that misbehavior does.

Lohan and Cyrus both have parents with lots to answer to as well as hangers on toadies who are filling their pockets every time Miley pulls down her pants and Lohan just falls down.

By the way, Amanda Bynes is a Nickelodeon product, not Disney.

Harry Bastard

Soooo…the only thing the movie has in common (according to the blogger referenced) with HCA’s original story ‘The Ice Queen’ is the environment in which it takes place. Whoo.

Harry Bastard

There’s a bit of a quandry…how do you honestly comment on the content of a film when the description of the film’s characters and script make it seem objectionable? Eh, I’ll wait for the DVD.

otterhead

Cripes, this comes off as people who really, really want to be offended.

Would it have been better if he’d said “appealing” instead of “pretty”?

optimist

They also refer to an animator in their headlines as a “Disney exec”, which suggests something completely different than the fact that the guy talking is an animator, an artist. Ignorance and jumping to preformed conclusions. I think it’s grossly unfair to leap to other topics and conclusions based on the animator’s remarks, which were anecdotal and taken out of their technical challenge/animation context.

Ariel

I know a lot of people are posting really long comments, but after all this, I can only say that people could be so sensitive these days. I’ll see the movie before I judge it.

thomas

How do you know any of the males are love interests if you haven’t seen the movie yet? What if it’s just a movie about sisters and the males are just there as a supporting cast?

And it looks like there are two males and two females on the poster (not counting the snowman and deer). Seems quite equal to me.

Harry Bastard

Again, hard to know out of context, but Disney isn’t exactly famous for it’s progressive stance on strong female lead characters.

IJK

Ignore any and all criticisms you ever hear on Tumblr. It’s a joke site for discussion. It’s the perfect place for people to go and act like they have strong opinions without the fear of dozens of people responding and telling them how stupid they are because of the lack of a proper “Reply” button.

IJK

Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan and Aladdin all had similar girl designs…. This “trend” didn’t exactly start with Tangled.

Power_Animator

I think things become more distinct when they are seen in 3D…Disney has had a style since their beg with Fred Moore, After Fred Moore, then Milt Kahl after Milt Kahl, Glen Keane.. People forget that in styles there are limitations to “NEW” just look at comics Joe Mad, Scott Campbell ‘s work. Limitations Limitations. Disney is distinct from other studios because of style and animation…but limited because of those same factors.

JJ

I’ve got a crazy idea… how about everybody just go see the movie first before losing their shit?

DJ

Have you seen the gif playing above? Even if they don’t look exactly alike, the resemblance is pretty uncanny.

darciam

They look about as similar as Hans and Flynn but no one is complaining about that.

KLA

The gif goes far too fast to make any reasonable comparisons.

animator

Women are human beings, if you animate a man then you can animate a woman.

Mike

There are several types of pretty in the real world. Why can’t animation seem to show case this? Art by Katie Rice.

kate

Disney started with The Snow Queen as inspiration, that was never meant to be the movie we made. Elsa and Anna are sisters, they were DESIGNED to look alike. Their expressiveness wasn’t limited to make them pretty – this quote was taken completely out of context. Lino was trying to describe the general challenge of CG. We use this language of something being “off-model” or “ugly” when the CG character starts to look wonky, whether male or female. Appeal is a major part of animation – THAT is what he means by pretty, not that we animated these girls only batting their eyelashes. Our animators challenge themselves every day to bring nuance and emotional depth to a 3D model while trying to maintain the design so they don’t start looking like a completely different character.

trenton hancock

“frozen head” of animation = Walt Disney

Toads

Attractive female humans can make unattractive faces. Example. Have any good looking woman tilt her chin as close to her neck as possible. Watch a live action film with an attractive woman and pause it. You’ll get some weird faces. I’m an animator I’m not going to get caught up with having my female character look “pretty” all the time. It’s a choice.

Toads

Disagree. I know plenty of animators that don’t agree with what he was saying. Honestly, I’m fed up with conservative animators limited ideas of what is “appealing.” I had an animation instructor try to tell me that my female character wasn’t acting feminine enough so she wouldn’t be appealing. He was just using the principals of animation to push his gender politics.

Funkybat

I liked Lucy’s odd design and didn’t find her personality to be annoying, but it did bother me that she ended up as “damsel in distress” in the end. From the way she handled Gru at the beginning, I’m pretty sure she could have kicked that fat Lucha Libre guy’s ass without much fuss. And if their reason for letting her guard down is her being distracted by her romantic preoccupation with Gru, that’s even worse.

http://voyagesextraordinaires.blogspot.com/ Cory Gross

Miyazaki isn’t concerned with making women “pretty.” On the contrary, he has a good time making people in general look fairly grotesque. The sameness in his character designs is a matter of house style (and, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind them evolving past that), but when you see Kiki or Nausicaa or San or Sheeta or Chihiro you don’t automatically think that these are supposed to be princesses.

.. too bad you couldn’t name anyone.. I wasn’t trying to be egotistical.. It’s just a fact that there isn’t any modellers that are amazing at drawing and clay.. A big reason why pixar still uses clay maquettes..and why other studios constantly need 2d artists to draw over cg..

DeltaTau

Sadly, many of the social justice movements have been invaded by extremely immature people who get violently emotional at perceived slights. They demand not to be judged, and then demonize others based on zero evidence: it’s atomic level hypocrisy. It’s frustrating, and beginning to ruin many years of forward progress.

peskyparakeet

Someone once told me some people get into that so they can appear to be morally superior. I don’t know. But whatever the case may be… I agree with you. They are only hurting the causes they claim to care about.

Brad M

To those who misunderstood what Lino DiSalvo had mentioned and decided to blow out of proportion. I point you to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cecx5HVtUDY (at 1:30) the exact same thing Lino had mentioned is also mentioned in this video. But why? well, chances are if your complaining about this whole situation then you just simply don’t understand the complexity’s of animation. Just because a studio wants their lead character to stay “pretty” does not in anyway mean that they are sexist or have some vendetta against female characters. Everybody has a choice, and because their choice doesn’t validate how you think things should be, doesn’t mean any person or studio should take blame for it.

Marysh

Animating women may be difficult, but keeping them ‘pretty’ and generic is definitely a decision. Disney is deciding to perpetuate the same images it’s known for, which I’m getting a bit bored with. Rapunzel, Elsa and Anna really look so similar, I’m disappointed.
When I watch the latest from Dreamworks animated films and see the diversity in their recent female designs, I find myself rolling my eyes at Disney. For example, Dreamworks’ The Croods turned the notion of prettiness upside down with Eep. She’s a caveman, she has features which in modern society wouldn’t be conventionally attractive (notice: conventionally attractive, not unattractive). She screams, grimaces, grunts, pouts, rolls her eyes, roars, smiles, laughs, weeps, stares. She has a huge brow ridge, wiry hair, a wide smile, a large jaw, big shoulders- She’s exaggerated and has a fun range, but she definitely doesn’t fit into any obvious template. Not to mention that in The Croods, there are four main females and three main males, while Frozen has narrowed a previously female-dominated story down to only two main female characters.
Or, I look at Astrid and I see her as pretty, but individual. She doesn’t look anything like Fiona, Eep, Toothfairy or Roxie to me.
I’m not an animator, it’s true. But Disney is a leader in the animation field. I guess I feel the need to hold them accountable, because even if it’s hard, they should be experimenting and moving beyond it’s status quo. This is one of the best animation studios around, I don’t really care if it’s difficult. It may be difficult to diversify, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it. They should be capable of changing it up and diversifying their characters and their stories. If they need to ‘keep them pretty,’ at least expand what is considered pretty.

Power_Animator

People will always wretch, its just the thing to do. I do agree with you here. As long as you have a style, there will always be some similarities some noticeable at first and some not so much. Anime has those same obstacles.

Power_Animator

There we go!! People like to pick fights

guest

I’m late, I’m just a nerdy outsider, sorry, but I think this is still worth noting:

A – Glen Keane: The sequence where Flynn is dying in Rapunzel’s arms. It was the most difficult and the most rewarding because the acting was so extremely subtle. The expressions of someone crying are inherently ugly. All the muscles in the face fight each other. No one wants a camera in their face at that moment. But we challenged the animators to go for the ugly face and as Rapunzel fights and holds back tears, the emotions are so real and so true. And it’s so effective because when that tear comes from Rapunzel’s eye and heals Flynn, you believe there is enormous pain in Rapunzel’s heart. If you don’t believe that tear comes from a heart of love the movie doesn’t work. It was successful and emotionally gripping. I was never more proud of our animators then at that moment.
-snip-

It’s the exact opposite of what DiSalvo said! And yet they’re both speaking as heads of animation, and Frozen’s characters look like bland reskins of Keane’s Rapunzel. I know Keane is gone from Disney now, but are the animators the same? What do they say?

It’s worth noting that yes animation in general aims for simplicity since it is not a complete realistic depiction and this includes styles where every character is a carbon copy with different hairstyles to styles where every character is unique in every aspect. The issue here is that with disney (and with a lot of animation) women are all carbon body copies of a specific mold (Hour glass figure -quite busty with ample hips and thin waist, short height, rounded imp like head, large child like eyes) with slightly different hair or eye color while male characters tend to have an extreme amount of variety (and varying doesn’t mean ‘ugly’ as is noted by the two main male characters in frozen both of whom have distinct facial features and body types – but who are both considered attractive. However it’s also true that it would be nice to see women who are good who are allowed to be ugly or ‘not perfect and beautiful’ as women are generally not allowed to do so unless they are evil) and this is most noticeable not only in the two main male characters in frozen vs. the main female characters in frozen but also in tangled where the most variety in body types come from the many men at the bar. If we did a test and stripped all characters of their hair and hair shape (reason being is this is often the only difference between female characters) and displayed the silhouettes of all of the characters bodies you would just about never be able to tell which female character was which but you would have a better time figuring out which male character is which because they are more distinct and theres something wrong with that. Women aren’t allowed to be women, they have to be perfect.

Antago Dynamaur

Yes, and it’s despicable considering the first element to teaching children the difference between good and bad is to take superficial bias out of the equation; the problem is that Disney has unequivocally used its wealth to set itself up as the ultimate children’s storyteller and judge, ALWAYS portraying stories about good vs. evil—self-appointing their empire as the divine judge of “family fun”, heroic endeavors and discernment, yet they are rotting with age-old hypersexualization, stereotypes, and cliches. If I walked into a courtroom and the judge said, “Mmm. No—the cute girl is clearly the good one and the stronger looking girl is obviously in the wrong,” the streets would be filled with riots … But if Disney can psychologically program our children behind tyrannical images of all-powerful pixy-dust and castles, but using words like “magical” and “good family-fun”, suddenly no one should say anything? Actions speak louder than words, and we don’t need Disney to explicitly damn themselves: Their cartoon character designs and sitcom casting choices speak for themselves.

Kate

No…Actually it’s not the same ‘design pattern’ it’s the same design style because it’s by the same guy…but we’re not talking about style we’re talking about different body and face shapes within the style. All the men in disney have unique bodies and face types while all the women’s body’s and heads are carbon copies. This is not true of Ghibli though – my favorite example is from KiKi’s delivery service where we have a pregnant woman! Also the reason why Studio Ghibli films are better than disney is very simple and can be broken down into a few important points.

1. Variety in stories – disney likes to go back to it’s same ‘types’ of stories over and over. Disney reuses plot devises and story types (like magical curse, just in time, princesses) over and over while Ghibli tries new things and types of stories. Theres a wide amount of difference between the actual stories and plots in Nausica to Grave of the Fireflies to Spirited Away to My Neighbor Totoro.

2. This is kind of the big one – they follow through on their ideas. I feel like disney sets up a pretty cool story but then chickens out feeling like they can’t go too in depth with the story or world they’ve created – whether their reason is because they feel like kids won’t like it or understand it, it would make them have to animate a longer film, it would be more complicated I don’t know. But what I do know is that Miyazaki is fine with going all the way to the ends of his plot points, side stories, and even the dark places he tells us exist. If you look at spirited away it has many very dark moments even starting with her parents turning into pigs. We also even have a scene where Haku in dragon form is getting blood everywhere – which is starkly different from disney who is too worried about doing anything dark for fear that it will be too frightening or upsetting – because they must have a pure happiness story with only mild speed bumps. Let’s compare this film to Brave, which I thought would be a pretty awesome film. I was fine with this film up until she met the witch in the woods and then I remembered ‘oh yes this is a disney film and if disney doesn’t reuse plot devises every so often walt will come back from the grave and eat our brains’. Then when all the bear madness started it was like, oh right they made their point this is a kids film (Which just because something is aimed at kids does not mean it should be written in a dulled down unintelligent manner, kids are actually smarter than you think) but disney always does this. (It’s also worth noting that in recent times there have been several ‘kids shows’ that have gained an adult following because they were so well written or interesting like adventure time so appealing to adults (outside of the occasional bawdy joke kids won’t get) is worthwhile). I want to like disney’s films but they keep doing these things. Like in brave they have the wisps – a neat device! -that they didn’t follow through on. They could’ve done SO MUCH with these things but they didn’t. Also you’re in freaking medieval scotland! And I got the impression from the preview that the story would be about her going off on her own – having an epic adventure that allowed her to learn valuable lessons and then return home at some point all the wiser which would have been awesome especially an adventure in medieval celtic scotland. But instead she went out, BEARZ, went home, BEARZ, went out, BEARZ, went home, BEARZ, went out one last time, BEARZ – fixed the bear problem, brief spirit tie in THE END. Also Wreck it Ralph which I like was also not followed through on, I expected them to go to more places…but instead it was straight to the places it needed to go…not much adventure…

EricaSalvia

I agree with you on all points! I know this is an old post by now, but I love that before Frozen was even released, you summed up my biggest critique of it:

“I feel like disney sets up a pretty cool story but then chickens out feeling like they can’t go too in depth with the story or world they’ve created – whether their reason is because they feel like kids won’t like it or understand it, it would make them have to animate a longer film, it would be more complicated I don’t know.”

This is exactly how I felt about Frozen. That opening scene with the song “Frozen Heart” set the tone for a movie that it didn’t follow through on. It introduced Elsa’s essence as a character, but then quickly lost that initial mystique and devolved into a fun romp that focused mostly on Anna. It was so blatantly obvious that Elsa was supposed to be the focus of the movie—she was the most interesting character by far and the soul of the movie—but they decided it was too risky to have an introverted, conflicted, mature female lead as opposed their usual upbeat, free-spirited, naive and cute female lead. So they chickened out. There were a few captivating elements in the movie involving Elsa but they just left me wanting more and feeling dissatisfied. So much wasted potential.

Lithia

Actually, one of the main reasons why Frozen (or rather, a Disney adaptation of The Snow Queen) was in development troubles for about 75 years was because they had trouble working out the “Snow Queen” character. It’s not that hard to understand that they would make her the secondary character in the end.

Dusty Ayres

That, and they couldn’t adapt the story to the modern day.

darciam

1. I don’t think the stories are that similar. The themes are familiar to Americans because they’re derived from stories and lessons we grew up with. Miyazaki’s seem unique to us, but his films are based in Japanese, not American, lore. In Japan, his stories are similar to Disney in that they’re familiar to the people there. So that’s not a fair comparison. Besides, Disney does experiment. A lot. The problem is, people don’t appreciate those stories. Please try and tell me that Treasure Planet and Lilo and Stitch are just “the same old thing”. They took big risks in those films – and unfortunately, they did not pay off. Largely because people like you refuse to give Disney any credit and those less critical were turned off from it because it DIDN’T fit that formula. Princess and the Frog was an amazing film – but it wasn’t nearly as successful as it should’ve been. Again, because it was too different.

2. Brave is a Pixar film, but lets ignore that – you’re going based off what the media protrayed Brave to be, not what the story actually was. The media were the ones who painted it as this grand film of feminism and female independence, so now you think they “chickened out” by not following through with that, when really it was probably not a huge intention to begin with, and I thank them for that because I hate the trope of making feminist characters just for the hell of it. Merida I see as a stronger version of Ariel or Jasmine – someone who craves independence and freedom, but who is also a bit immature and doesn’t truly understand the world. Whatsmore, if they had gone that route it would’ve ignore a lot of the Scottish lore they were able to delve into. As for DISNEY movies – Disney doesn’t chicken out. They basically invented the idea that you can put death and drama and sadness in a kids film – prior to Disney films, kids entertainment was mostly cheesy and non-threatening – slapstick humor, almost all comedy. Fairytales which were threatening were 100% told to make children behave, not to entertain or enlighten them through a clever story. Snow White changed that by taking what was most a cautionary tale meant to scare children, and turning it into a full on story which children could appreciate but which didn’t hold anything back. And ever since then, it is now nothing special to see death in a children’s film, not to mention more serious scenes. Anyone who has seen Hunchback of Notre Dame can attest, Disney is not afraid to do some risque stuff.

People are highly critical of Disney because it is the oldest animation studio in existence, one of the oldest film studios in existence, and has such an irremovable place in the public eye that everyone is going to by hyper critical of it. Disney is the definition of the mainstream. Which is a terrible place to be, honestly, especially for a company whose projects consist of multiple people with different ideas and different ways of accomplishing those ideas. So they have to, simultaneously, offer things which are new and exciting and innovative but also things which are familiar because the fact of the matter is, most people want things which are FAMILIAR. Disney and Dreamworks are the only companies who manage both in terms of film, albeit in different ways. Meanwhile other animations studios put out nonsense like the “Dr. Seuss” movies (here put in quotes since they don’t do his books any justice) and films which truly are tired and bored and have no quality or thought put into them.

If you want stories which consistently go for a “social progressive” stance, then just watch Dreamworks. That has never been Disney’s goal though. No Disney story is out to make a huge social or political change – since the beginning. Walt was not a political man, he didn’t see his stories or work as an avenue to change anything, that wasn’t his stint. He was a storyteller. He wanted to make entertaining stories which could maybe share a simple lesson but were mostly just fun adventure – no complex metaphors or symbolism, no agendas. That’s part of Disney’s appeal – it’s simple and accessible, but at the same time intelligent enough to not dumb down the content or try to hide the dark side of it to avoid offense.

Besides, these are hour and a half movies. They can’t just have characters wander around exploring with no aim for large portions of it – if you want that, play video games. Preferably sandboxes. All movies, even Miyazaki films, have a railway they travel on – they don’t spend a lot of time diverting from the story either. Movies that do that, generally aren’t considered good films.

Le Batteur

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a challenge if their female characters weren’t practically carbon copies of eachother.

Laurel

Personally I do not have a problem with females having to look attractive all the time or whatever people here are fighting about. To me, the main disappointment is that lately Disney makes a lot of the characters look alike. I might be blind, but I can barely tell the difference between Rapunzel and Anna and Elsa… In fact, I hardly see any difference between Rapunzel and Anna… And I remember old Disney movies where every female character was unique. Like Ariel, Pocahontas, Belle, Aurora, the list continues. Also, what I loved about the old animations was that every princess or female character had different ways of expressing feelings and emotions, it looked more real to me. Nowadays, when I look at Rapunzel or Meridia I see huge similarities even in expression of emotions… They are very alike… For example, if we remove everything like clothes or hair etc. and make them all have the amazed facial expression you would find it difficult to tell who is Anna, who is Elsa etc. They are very similar imo… But taking old princesses – and you can identify majority of them. I am not an animator though, so I do not know what obstacles they have, but I really wish they could make the characters more unique… Besides, changing the shape of eyes or face doesn’t necessarily make an ugly character. Beauty can be just as varied.

NicaPumpkin

and pony!! :)

egaode

So what is it that makes animating females so much HARDER than animating males?

Not Dumbed Down

Is it me or did everyone in the movie look like they had too many generations of vaccines or have down syndrome? Gave me a headache to watch those big dumb oversized eyes that lacked anything that looked really human. Strange and disturbing.

Niji Potamus

I dunno if we have the “full range of expressions” women are capable of generating in animation it will almost assuredly cast them in an evil or villianous light, as a woman scorned is capable of generating an expression of such repulsive anger and rage as to easily make any male attending in the audience piss himself in fear. I think it would be a bad decision profit margin wise to go this route…when men make these kinds of angered expressions it is usually played off as almost comedic, or at best a deathglare that literally slays the reciving character, but does not so upset the audience. Expressing the full range of women’s emotions in animation would be a quite deadly double edge sword in this case. I understand where women are coming from wanting this side of themselves to be displayed, but as 50% of the paying movie goers/buyers are male and it would discourage at least 95% of said males from spending that moneythe profit loss would be far too great for this to be implimented(and indeed may chase off many or perhaps even most females who do not want that side of their gender to be shown as well). All I see is the possible downfal of women being portrayed positively in media if such full range expression were to be permited. If women start getting seen as the ugly rage monsters they are capable of being it might mean a much more negative view of them as a whole for generations to come, one which they might not recover from, just look at the male gender in recent years after the reveal and vilification of their gender.

concernedcitizen100

There are too many animated movies for the girls. It seems every movie that comes out needs to focus on female characters. It is simple to understand that boys have no interest in listening to a story about a girl, or watching a girl, as boys view girls as gross and full of cooties. It is about time there was some focus on movies for boys, which means strong male characters, not all the wimps and bumbling idiots we have been watching for decades now.

Love Disney**

Are the same animators making another movie?? I loved the art!

Keegan

Am I the only one who sees this guy started his comment off with, “Historically”… as in – within history?

Mozzarella

3D and CG animating is different from 2D animating. I can see a LOT of comments talking about how they animated 2D films or how 2D films are more expressive–well yeah. They’re 2D. That’s an entirely different world.

He talked about the things going off-model. It’s not that expressive 3D characters haven’t been done before, but LOOK AT THIS ANIMATION. They allow for softness in the skin, for elasticity, for dimples and rising cheeks. THEY DID NOT HAVE THOSE IN INCREDIBLES. There was still stiffness and unrealistic texture then–easier to animate. It’s harder now, because they’re working with more elements than ever before.

Now, they have the skin moving like real skin, lips pulling wrinkles, hair in millions of individual strands. And they are more likely to go off-model. So it’s HARDER TO ANIMATE, because the slightest movement makes the entire model go insane.

Do you think the animators decide how a character looks in the end? HAH.

“The Disney look” is something people associate with Glen Keane’s work–a look used for Frozen. This is a “marketable” princess look, so execs would naturally choose Glen Keane’s design sensibility for their new princesses.

Disney Execs choose what is more marketable, and they decide that “pretty” is marketable, so animators are forced to keep to the perfect princess design standard of “pretty” and are forced to maintain a level of good animation while keeping the model faces looking “pretty”.

So don’t shit on animators who say it’s “hard” because IT. IS. HARD.

Sorry to disappoint all you elitists but try doing an animation job in the largest industry in the world while pleasing their marketing execs before judging people for what they say.

GIo04

Princess mononoke anyone..?

Bangerz tour

Lolers :D

Nick

Every one of the “straight” heroes, heroines and some villainess’ in classic 30′s, 40′s, 50′s Disney’s film were hard to draw, finding interesting expressions while trying to keep them on model, while maintaining the handsome/pretty/regal/dignified aspect of that character. This is about a drawing/design problem specific to particular characters, and not a blanket generalization that wimmins gotta look pretty and never make scrunchy faces.

It could be the case that the animator being quoted literally did mean to say that sistas got to get their nails and hair did– but that sounds far less charitable and just as unlikely.

Tammie

If a company can earn money simply by reducing half of the world’s
population into a generic and falsified ideal of beauty, more power to
them.

Imagine that line being said about blacks, hispanics, muslims or any group, replacing beauty for an adjective of choice.

Wow. Money buys it all, doesn’t it?

NOT!

Tamsin Parker

As long as they stop sporting that stupid ‘Dreamworks’ face.

Look at Isao Takahata. He makes realistic character expressions and still makes them appealing.

Dusty Ayres

I wish that people would stop going to these blogs (The Mary Sue in particular); they seem to have no real existence other than to be constantly indignant of anybody and anything that they think is harmful to woman and minorities-I’ve stopped going there, and am soon going to unfriend myself from its Facebook page.

Dusty Ayres

Said people can’t do that, though, in animation, comic books, or video games, because that would take real work, which can’t be done from behind a computer screen; better to set up a blog and complain, and through said blog, backseat create things (it’s why we’ve never seen something similar to this record company ever be set up in recent years by any of the current generation of social justice warriors, they’re too busy complaining to do anything-and even when they get the money, they do a slight variation on the same thing they’re doing now, which is not creative.)

And the beat goes on…..

Fudgey Fun

He’s right, and there’s nothing “sexist” or “chauvanist” about anything that he said. People are WAY too sensitive to these things. Recently Margaret Cho, for example (a KOREAN-American comedienne, was accused of being racist because she imitated the leader of North Korea! That’s not racism — it’s called satire. Even if she weren’t of Korean descent, it still wouldn’t be racism, but her ethnicity adds depth to the point that it is not racist).

Léa Maro Langelier

As a woman, I make a point to NOT LOOK CUTE when I’m angry. The intent of being angry is “I’m Offended” – not “I’m cute. Please dismiss my emotion and concentrate on my cuteness.”